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Documentaries have a way of making history come alive, and well-made and innovative documentaries are especially engrossing and vivid. Over the summer Brett Banhazl ’12 will work in Brighton, Mass., with American Experience, an award-winning television show featuring documentaries on various topics in American history.

Within the past 25 years, a new type of social movement has emerged in American culture: religious environmental groups. Their members apply religious texts and beliefs to environmental causes, raising environmental concern and benefiting sustainable practices. However, despite how diverse and numerous these groups have become, sociologists have yet to study them in detail.

While LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) subjects are a hot topic, many people remain unaware of the experiences of this community.  LGBTQ sensitivity is a major issue for middle and high schools, colleges and universities, businesses and organizations around the country and many do not know where and how to start addressing these issues.  Recent graduate Megan Bolger '11 has founded an organization, Pride For All, in order to provide educational services and information on this topic.

Language is undoubtedly a fundamental aspect of many human interactions. For this reason, the study of language serves a vital purpose in neuroscience, medicine, and even everyday life. Sarah Kane ’12 and Amanda O’Brien ’13 are spending their summer researching language and the brain under Assistant Professor of Psychology Jeremy Skipper. The group is working to disprove the classical model of language processing and to discover more about how language is processed in the human brain.

The Great Recession left a deep mark on the American economy, most notably on the labor market. While this market is recovering, progress is very slow and many Americans remain in search of a job. Furthermore, current labor market trends are highly unexpected, leaving many economists looking for a definitive explanation. Mihai Dohotaru ’13, a recipient of a Summer Levitt Research Fellowship Grant, will work toward the answer with Professor of Economics Christophre Georges over the course of his project “The Housing Bubble and the U.S. Labor Market after the ‘Great Recession.’”

Computer programming, and specifically natural language processing, has the potential to decode sentence structure and organize immense quantities of information. This summer, Richard Klockowski ’12 is working with Associate Professor of Computer Science Alistair Campbell with aspirations to automatically extract information from Pubmed’s database of medical research papers.

Fluorescent materials have important implications for modern technologies. However, the study of fluorescence can be a complex and precise matter. This summer, Erin Bessette-Kirton ’12, a physics major with minors in math and geology, will work with Professor of Physics Ann Silversmith to investigate the structure of terbium in doped sol-gel glass and the terbium concentration’s effect on fluorescence decay.

By teaching children sustainable, environmentally-friendly practices, educators make strides toward changing the future for the better. At summer camps, for example, children can learn about sustainable farming while exploring the world around them and breathing fresh air. Sarah Gamble ’13 will spend the summer as an intern for Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, Vt., where she will help run a series of camps. She is supported by the Joseph F. Anderson ’44 Internship Fund.

World hunger is a pressing issue, yet its causes aren’t fully known and there is much debate about what responsibilities developed countries should have in ending it. Daniel Knishkowy ’13, a recipient of a 2011 Emerson Summer Grant, will explore the issue of world hunger with Associate Professor of Philosophy Katheryn Doran for their project, “World Hunger: The Debate About its Causes and the Scope of Our Ethical Responsibilities.”

The human brain reacts differently to emotional cues depending on which hemisphere is processing them. By exploring  hemisphere  reactions to varying  stimuli, these two student researchers hope to unmask some of the brain's mysteries.